EMC looks to the clouds with TwinStrata and new VMax3 array

EMC's TwinStrata acquisition announced on Tuesday is just part of a bigger move to keep its venerable VMax storage platform up to date with large enterprises as they enter the cloud era.

The VMax3 line is set to ship in the third quarter with Hypermax, with other capabilities coming in the future. EMC said it will give more details on TwinStrata integration at a later date.

The company will also offer ProtectPoint, a feature for directly backing up data from a VMax3 to an EMC Data Domain system. It will be available in the fourth quarter for an additional fee.

ProtectPoint can make backups as much as 10 times faster by eliminating the need for a traditional backup infrastructure, according to EMC. For example, enterprises won't need to use a backup server or run their backup jobs through the app server, said Dave Simpson, a data protection analyst at 451 Research. The downside to ProtectPoint, for now, is that it only works with VMax, Data Domain and Oracle, Simpson said.